Restructuring data is one of FME’s specialties, and now you can do this more efficiently than ever. Discover the tools available in FME for managing and validating your data’s attributes, with live demos and best practices.

1. Attribute Magic:
Restructure, validate, and
other ways to control schema

2. FME 2016 gives you total control
over your data’s attributes.

3. Agenda
● Your attributes in FME
● Attribute management
– AttributeManager demo
● Quality control
– AttributeValidator demo

4. Your Attributes in FME

7. Attribute Management

8. Create, rename, copy,
delete, reorder, apply
expressions, and modify
all your attributes in a
single transformer.

9. It consolidates a lot of transformers.

10. What can it do?
➢ Create
➢ Rename
➢ Copy
➢ Remove
➢ Set values
➢ Reorder
➢ Concatenate (Text Editor)
➢ Apply arithmetic expressions (Arithmetic Editor)
➢ Set conditional values (Conditional Value)
➢ Reference earlier attributes

11. Automated Attribute Definitions
Tip: Choose Automatic mode on writer Feature Types.

12. Demo: Managing Attributes (CAD to GIS)
Did You Know?
86% of our GIS users
plan to use the
AttributeManager to
handle their
attributes.

13. Attribute Quality Control

14. Validate your attributes
against test conditions
and route them based
on pass / fail.

15. Challenge: Data Quality
If you distribute poor quality data
you've amplified the problem.
If you distribute good quality
data you've amplified the
benefits.
Data validation is key to many
FME workflows…

16. Challenge: Conforming to Standards
●ISO 19157 (GIS)
●NCS (CAD)
●OGC
●INSPIRE
●National, local,
your company, etc.

17. Challenge: Which tools to use?
➢ Tester and TestFilter
➢ AttributeCreator (conditional tests)
➢ AttributeClassifier
➢ AttributeRangeFilter & AttributeFilter
➢ NullAttributeMapper
➢ DuplicateRemover
➢ StringSearcher
➢ StatisticsCalculator

18. Solution: AttributeValidator
Be confident about the data you’re
loading into a destination dataset.
Simplify your workspaces.

19. What can it test?
➢ Type (integer, float, char, xml, json, etc.)
➢ ‘In’ (either a list or range). Good for domain validation
➢ Matches a regular expression
➢ Unique
➢ Not Null
➢ … and more …

20. Interpreting the Results
➢ Summary Attribute:
_fme_validation_message
➢ List of all messages:
_fme_validation_message_list{}
{0} Attribute 'CodePrefix' with value 'ABE' fails check for Matches Regular Expression '[ABCD]{3}'
{1} Attribute 'num_measures' with value '12' fails check for in Range '[0,10]'
{2} Attribute 'CodePrefix' with value 'ABE' fails check for in 'ABC,ABD,TXU,TXV'

21. Demo: Generating Validation Reports

22. ● AttributeManager consolidates many attribute
transformers and adds new functionality.
● AttributeValidator helps you ensure your data is
good quality.
● Both of these simplify your workspaces by
reducing the number of transformers needed.

23. Learn More
● http://fme.ly/attributes - Blog post on the
AttributeManager
● http://fme.ly/quality - Data quality
checklist
● FME Knowledge
Center

24. Thank you!
Questions?